The Bulletin was only launched in 2021 to support newsletters and their monetization on Facebook. However, Meta will discontinue the competing offer to Substack and Revue in the coming year.
In 2021, Facebook shared details about a new newsletter platform designed to rival the popular substack and revue offerings – which Twitter has meanwhile acquired. In June of last year, Meta launched Bulletin. The newsletter service enables creators, journalists, and other persons of public interest to send newsletters free.
In addition, the content can be shared on Facebook or the web. The users who have subscribed to the newsletter service pay directly to the creators of the newsletter – and CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently confirmed that creators do not have to pay any commission to Meta until at least 2024, similar to the subscriptions on Facebook. But despite well-known authors as figureheads, Bulletin has not established itself. The project is to be completed at the beginning of 2023.
Meta confirms the end of Bulletin: Authors can keep subscriber lists and content.
Katie Robertson reports for The New York Times that Bulletin should disappear from the scene by the beginning of 2023 at the latest. In a statement, a member of Meta’s press team said:
Bulletin has allowed us to learn about the relationship between Creators and their audiences and how to better support them in building their community on Facebook. While this off-platform product is ending, we remain committed to helping these and other Creators’ success and growth on our platform.
Meta initially opened Bulletin to several well-known authors, including journalists Mitch Albom and Malcolm Gladwell and journalist Jessica Yellin. Currently, 120 newsletter authors are active at Bulletin. With famous authors, who also include high-reach local reporters, Meta has deals, some of which are in the six-digit US dollar range. The newsletter service will pay out all authors after they have been discontinued. However, they can keep their subscriber lists and all content from their bulletin newsletters.
In the summer of 2022, Meta announced that it would cut the financing of news content on its platforms. Instead, the expansion of the ads and video areas is in the foreground. In May of this year, there were signs that payouts to News Publishers were being drastically reduced. While Bulletin is coming to an end, Meta is strengthening the Reels area with new ads and delivering various new advertising formats for Instagram.
